


Two Roads Diverged

by laventadorn



Series: The Never-ending Road [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen, Prompt fills from tumblr, based on TNER/NJE situations and characters, not currently taking prompts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2018-11-15 00:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 12
Words: 14,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11219067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laventadorn/pseuds/laventadorn
Summary: A series of prompt fills from my Tumblr, each unconnected to the rest. Not necessarily part of the "The Never-ending Road" or "No Journey's End" chronology, but based on characters and scenarios in those fics. See each chapter summary for the individual prompts.





	1. The Sorting Hat

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Robert Frost's poem, "The Road Not Taken," because I am in a rut with this road theme.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Did the hat consider putting Harriet in Slytherin too?

The Hat dropped over Harriet’s eyes, too big for her head. She sat in darkness, the din of the Great Hall strangely soft now, like she was listening to the seashell that the science teacher in Little Whinging kept in her classroom.

“Well, well, what have we here?” said a little voice in her ear. “Harriet Potter, is it?”

_Not you, too_ , Harriet thought in despair.

The little voice chuckled. It had a dry, almost sarcastic rustle to it. “I can read your mind, young one; it’s what you expect them to say. Now, where shall we put you?”

Harriet thought of Hermione bouncing up from the stool, beaming but pale, as the hat had shouted _Gryffindor_ ; Hermione on the train, rushing up already wearing her plain black robes and saying in a rush, _Do you_ know _how many books you’re in;_ Hermione in Ollivander’s, her hand shaking as she took a wand out of its dusty box and golden sparks dropped like glittering rain from the tip.

“Are you sure?” asked the small, rustling voice. “You could be great, you know, it’s all here in your head – and Slytherin will help you on the path to greatness, no doubt about that. No? – well, if you’re sure – better be GRYFFINDOR.”

Heart flipping with relief, Harriet pulled off the hat and was almost knocked off the stool by the noise exploding from the Gryffindor table. Percy the Prefect even got up to shake her hand, and Fred and George Weasley were throwing their hats in the air and yelling, “We got Potter!”

Hermione flung her arms around her as soon as Harriet squeezed onto the bench next to her.

“I knew it! Didn’t I say!” Hermione said in her ear.

Harriet grinned. She felt like only Hermione’s grip on her arm was keeping her from floating off the bench. “This is the start of you being right about everything, isn’t it?”

* * *

Severus watched Lily’s daughter be absorbed into Gryffindor with more fanfare than any other student he could remember in the last twenty years. Of course it would be Gryffindor. Any other option would have been ludicrous.

The feeling that he’d just had a narrow escape could only be paranoia.


	2. The Broken Book

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Snarriet non-magic where Harriet or Snape break something really important to the other person.

“ _Shit_ ,” Harriet said. “Shit!”

The book lay smoldering on the rug. She’d dragged it out of the fire – and then beaten the fire out – but the pages were all smoked and crackling.

The door swung open.

An impulse to kick the book under the couch seized her, but she told herself not to be a bloody coward.

She grimaced at Severus, who stood in the doorway surveying the wreckage. The bookcase tipped over, its books across the floor; the ladder she’d leapt from as the bookcase toppled; the table the ladder had knocked over; the vase the falling table had smashed; the ash across the rug; and herself, crouched over his favorite book. It was two hundred years old, and it was the first thing he’d ever bought for himself. Now, it was smoking.

“Er,” she said. “I… knocked it into the fireplace.”

He stepped over the ladder and, not stepping on any of the glass shards from the vase, knelt down in front of her, eyes narrowed. Embarrassed, she held up the book. 

“Maybe you can still read the middle? Only the outside looks really burnt…”

He took the book and set it aside without looking at it. “Did you manage to smash something of _yours_ in all of this? Like a shinbone?” 

“I’m fine,” she said, blinking. “But the book–”

“Books are replaceable.” He picked up her hand, eyes still narrowed as they studied the cut at the base of her palm. 

Something warm nestled under her heart. “So are shinbones.”

“Let us try to avoid that, at least. I haven’t replaced the last batch of Skelegrow.” He sliced a look at the sad remains of the bookshelf. “Clearly, I wasn’t thinking.”

“You’re a numpty, all right,” she said, grinning. 

“In more ways than one.” Still holding her hand, he pulled her up with him. “This needs cleaning. Try not to sprain anything on the way out of the room.”

“What about in the hall?” she asked, letting the gentle link of their hands pull her along. 

“What do _you_ think?”

He hadn’t looked once at the book.


	3. Woodbines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Harriet trying out smoking because she sees Snape and Narcissa doing it once and wants to be mature. Snape freaks the fuck out.

If Hermione found out that Harriet was – well, she wasn’t actually smoking. She’d just swiped a couple of Snape’s cigarettes and was letting one burn down.

The thing was, it smelled fucking awful. She’d heard stories of people hacking up lungs and vomiting after smoking for the first time, and the only thing confusing her was why they’d put the thing in their mouth after smelling it.

Hermione was going to smell the smoke on her, though, and lose it. She might believe Harriet hadn’t actually smoked anything, if Harriet presented the logic of her case.

“ _Why_ would you want to go even that far?” Hermione would want to know.

… And it would be embarrassing as hell to tell her she was jealous of Narcissa Malfoy.

It wasn’t really because Narcissa Malfoy looked like a film star, especially when she smoked, which she made into such a elegant endeavor that Harriet could almost understand people putting up with this horrible smell and probably even worse taste if it was in service to looking like that. Narcissa Malfoy could make sucking poison into your lungs seem like the best thing to do with your time.

The real reason Harriet was sitting here stinking up her clothes and hair was because Narcissa got to smoke with Snape…

(Yeah, she definitely would not be sharing that with Hermione.)

Harriet didn’t even want to _smoke_ with him. She was quite sure he’d flip his lid worse than Hermione if he found out she’d even tried. He got bent out of shape if she broke her fingernail; if he found out she’d been inhaling poison, he’d probably go catatonic.

She just … didn’t like Narcissa Malfoy having something with him that she didn’t.

“Dumb,” she sighed, crushing the cigarette on the brick wall next to her head. “It sounds stupid even when I’m just thinking it.”

She pocketed the other cigarette to throw away later and brushed past the climbing vine, heading back inside.

Only rounding the corner, she ploughed straight into Snape.

They both staggered back. Snape snapped a look first to the left and then to the right, like he was scoping out any potential witnesses. Harriet had chosen the Confessor’s Garden for a reason, though, and no one was around.

Then Snape’s eyes swiveled back, and he stared at her in mingled fury and horror.

“Why,” he growled, “do you smell like smoke?”

 _I knew it._ “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she said, nettled.

He thrust out his arm and maneuvered her to the side. She followed the path of his accusing glare and saw, lying forlorn on the stones, the crumpled cigarette end.

“I know what it looks like,” she said, rolling her eyes as the accusing glare bored into her next. “But I didn’t actually smoke it.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Makes more sense than actually sucking that into your lungs,” she said. “Just holding it and smelling it was bad enough.”

His suspicious scowl didn’t smooth out, but he did grunt, like he wouldn’t dispute that. “I would hope you’d have more sense than that, yes.”

“More than you and Narcissa Malfoy?”

He gave her an incredulous look. “What does that have to do with–”

Embarrassed, Harriet cut him off. “If you do it, you can’t expect me not to.”

“But you said you didn’t do it,” he shot back.

She crossed her arms. “I didn’t, but you don’t get to be mad at me even if I did.”

“I can be ‘mad’ about anything,” he said with scathing precision.

She had to admit the truth of that, too.

“I didn’t smoke it,” she said. “It seemed stupid.”

“It would have been,” he said, annoyed.

“This argument is kind of stupid, too.”

He made a vague noise in reply, like a grumpy cat who’d been awakened by an affectionate human. She took it for agreement. Snape didn’t like to agree outright, unless he could be insulting at the same time.

“So I’ll just give this back to you.” She dug the other cigarette out of her pocket and held it out.

Snape stared at it like she was offering him a dead flobberworm, or perhaps a lunch invitation to dine with Hermione, but he took it anyway.

“You swiped this from me, didn’t you,” he said.

She just smiled.


	4. Invalid

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Snape is sick, and it's Harriet to the rescue (or vice versa).

Harriet knew something was wrong when she let herself into his quarters and found Snape dozing upright in his chair by the fire. He never just fell asleep like that. In fact, she’d never seen him less than dangerously alert.

“Hoy.” She put her hand on his shoulder – delicately, like she was trying to move an eggshell, because startling Snape was never a good idea.

Only this time, he made an irritated, sleepy noise, which was so bloody adorable she almost choked, and squinted open his eyes.

“What?” he said grouchily.

“You were asleep.” She peered at the bags under his eyes, but they didn’t look any more cavernous than normal. Dungeon lighting never put anyone at their best, and Snape always looked ghastly, really; it was hard to tell if something else was wrong.

“I was not,” he said peevishly, ruffling the pages of his book.

Daringly, she placed the back of her hand against his forehead. He turned an incredulous look on her and brushed her hand away.

“I think you’ve got a fever."

“I’m _fine_.” But then he sneezed explosively – once – twice – three times.

“Yeah." She returned her hand to his shoulder as he slumped in his chair. It was a mark of how badly he must be feeling that he let her. “You’d count anything that wasn’t your leg falling off as ‘fine.’”

* * *

Severus wound up stretched out on the couch with the distinct feeling that he’d been bullied into it. That was the only way he’d have consented to lying around like an invalid, he was sure. It was the cold making his head too foggy.

He’d been feeling like old toast for the past two days but had made it admirably through mealtimes and classroom torture sessions on liberal doses of Pepper Up. But Pepper Up couldn’t cure a cold, and now he’d lost the battle – but not even to the illness: to Harriet.

He suffered her tucking a quilt around him and ordering tea with lemon from the house-elves. He felt pathetically attuned to her every movement. When she moved close to the couch with the tea, his whole body tensed. He had always been sick alone, his mother being of the belief that unless you were dead, you could fend for yourself. Having someone see him like this, feeble and slow-witted, was mortifying.

And yet the thought of driving her out was worse.

His hand trembled as he took the tea, rattling the cup against its saucer. Harriet gave no sign that she’d noticed, though he knew she had. She’d surely guessed at how he felt, being reduced to being waited on, and was carrying on with admirable practicality, like this was any other night when, in defiance of all sense and taste, she chose to forsake all friends and amusement and spend time with himself.

He thought, _You are perfect_ , and drank a swallow of hot tea to scald his throat, because who knew to what stupid depths he might descend in a state that was clearly as foolish as it was weak?

“Want me to read to you?” Harriet couldn’t mask the doubtful look she cast at the Potions journal he’d fallen asleep over before she came in.

“No,” he muttered. He tried pushing the tea away and sitting up. “I’ve essays to mark–”

“No way." She leaned over to push the tea back. Her hand closed over his, and he wanted it so badly to remain there that he pulled away. Her expression didn’t flicker, just remained no-nonsense, or as no-nonsense as she ever looked. The wild hair and thick glasses and her inattentive clothing choices always made her look rather nonsensical, but she could, in fact, take control and yank people into line. He imagined that _this_ Harriet was the one the Gryffindor Qudditch team saw.

“You’ll barely be able to read any of it,” she said, “and then you’ll fail them all because you feel like crap. Got any easy ones? I can grade the easy ones. Like, first years or something.”

“I’m very sure Minerva wouldn’t approve.” But he didn’t want to mark the essays – they made him feel like falling down a long flight of stairs on a good day – so he said, “Writing desk, on the left.”

Harriet clattered the roll-top open and pulled out a sheaf of Gryffindor first year essays. She sat down with a bottle of red ink and a raven’s black quill – “Is this your murder quill? For slashing student egos?” – and, propping her chin in her hand, started reading.

“Good grief, is this supposed to be handwriting?” 

In spite of a pounding headache, self-loathing, and feeling generally like an old boot, Severus was delighted. “You couldn’t prove it by me.”

“Ugh, I know this kid, he’s trying to live up to Fred and George’s legacy. Always setting off Dungbombs in the common room – I’m pretty sure Hermione’s going to skin him one of these days. Wait, if I write on these, it’s not going to be your handwriting.”

“I’ll change it later. Magic, Potter,” he said, and meant _I adore you._


	5. The Visitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Can we have a little side story of Hermione following Harriet one day because she's worried and wants to see for herself her interactions with Snape?

 

 

Hermione knew that Harriet would be livid if she found out what she was doing. And Harriet would most likely find out, because Hermione planned on telling her later. Spying on your friends wasn’t the best way to keep them happy with you, but sometimes needs must. And she simply couldn’t bank on Harriet’s opinion on this. She was, strangely and bizarrely, biased.

Hermione pulled the Invisibility Cloak out of Harriet’s trunk and stowed it beneath her robes. If anyone asked, she was on her way to the library – but that excuse was so good as to be needless: everybody figured that’s where she was going without her having to say anything. Parvati even tried to get her to return a book for her on her way out.

Once in the corridor, Hermione threw on the Cloak and passed unseen along the staircases and halls, until she reached the Confessor’s Garden.

A Soundless Charm on the door let her slip inside as unheard as she was unseen. Luckily it was too early for snow, although the bite of autumn grew sharper as the days grew shorter. She slipped off her shoes and crept across the flagstones in her thick wool socks. Torches on the wall pulled deep shadows to and fro, like the wind played in the ivy.

Harriet sat curled up on a bench, a thick quilt across her lap. She had her chin propped in one hand – which was smothered in thick fingerless mittens – as she read the book in her lap by the light of her jar of bluebell flames. She kept nibbling on the tip of her wand, and caught it between her teeth when she needed to turn a page.

“That is hardly good wand safety,” said Snape’s cold voice from behind Hermione.

It was only from sheerest luck that she didn’t have a heart attack; or perhaps that was down to good genes and the luck only carried her out of his way. She’d have _wished_ for a heart attack if he’d walked into her.

She held her breath and twisted her head around to look over her shoulder. Snape had paused beneath an ivy-thick arch, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes narrowed on Harriet. There was no kindlier expression on his face, no expression of welcome – he looked like he always did, in the Great Hall or in classes, cold and sneering.

Hermione couldn’t tell if the hot rush in her chest was anxiety or – indignation. He shouldn’t be looking at Harriet as if she were just _anyone_.

But Harriet was grinning as she pulled her wand out from between her teeth. “Oh, come on, I’m not likely to blow my own head off. I’m still muttering spells under my breath when we do non-verbal spells.”

“I’d noticed,” Snape said pointedly.

Harriet patted the bench next to her with a smile that Hermione knew very well: it was often aimed at herself, when Harriet was not-so-secretly laughing at her.

“Have a seat,” she offered. “Finest bench in the garden.”

“It’s the only bench in the garden.” But Snape sat next to her.

(Hermione wondered if this was what heroines in old novels felt when they were having a fit of the vapors.)

Snape looked disdainfully down at the book in Harriet’s lap. “I shouldn’t have given you that.”

“I’m learning a lot,” Harriet said, and Hermione realized it was that horrid book – the Half Blood Prince’s book. Hermione hated that book – it was –

Wait, Snape _had given it to her_?

For a moment Hermione couldn’t concentrate on spying properly in her fury. A second later, she realized there was something not quite right about Snape saying that. Harriet had been given the book by Slughorn on the first day that year – he’d pulled it out of the classroom cupboard and handed it to her, all marked up. There had been two books, and one had gone to Ron. Unless Snape had told Slughorn to make sure she got that one… but why would Slughorn have countenanced such obvious favoritism from anyone but himself? And he acted so unaffectedly delighted by Harriet’s prowess…

“You had five years’ opportunity to ‘learn something,’” Snape was saying. “I never noticed that motivating you before.”

“Yeah, well, that was all lessons’ stuff, wasn’t it? Not secret facts about you.” Harriet had that laughing look in her eye again.

“Ah, yes,” said Snape, with sarcasm of a purity that Hermione had seldom heard him waste on his students, “I forgot the true objective of my classes.”

“Trust me, everyone would love to get their hands on secret facts about you,” Harriet said. “It’s just–”

“Not a compliment,” Snape finished, his expression laced with irony.

Harriet grinned. “Nope.”

“And Slughorn still hasn’t noticed you brewing from a book marked six ways from Sunday,” Snape said with contempt. “Why am I failing to be surprised.”

“Guess you know him too well,” Harriet said cheerfully. She’d been cheerful since the moment he arrived. Hermione couldn’t fathom feeling good about Snape being around. All of his acrimony only seemed to amuse her, and – probably without realizing it, because had she intended it, she’d have been very obvious – she’d moved closer to him on the bench. Snape hadn’t budged – but that meant he hadn’t moved away, either.

“In the staffroom or at the table, he never shuts up about you,” he said.

“Lucky you,” Harriet said, “I know how hard you find it not to listen to – what’s the word? Something about pans.”

“Panegyric.”

“Yeah, that – when nobody’s giving a panegyric about me, you don’t know what to do with yourself. You might have to think something nice about me on your own, and we know how hard that is.”

She was grinning again, Snape looking at her unimpressed. But Hermione noticed that he held very still on the bench.

“Except for the subject being Potions,” he said dismissively, “there’s no praise Slughorn could give about you that would be undeserved.”

Harriet blinked. She looked like she thought she couldn’t have heard properly. Snape glanced away, appearing unconcerned.

“You got a fever and didn’t tell me?” Harriet said, reaching up to touch the backs of her fingers to his forehead.

Rolling his eyes, Snape caught her hand and pulled it away from his face, but frowned down at her hand in its fingerless mitten. “Your hands are freezing.”

“They’re always like that. Hermione says it’s poor circulation or something.”

He was still touching her hand – lightly, cupping it rather than holding it – and Harriet’s face was so –

Hermione turned away. She’d come here for this purpose, to see what they were like, how Snape acted toward her, and though a handful of minutes wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy her on that point, for the first time, she really felt that she was –

Watching something dear to Harriet.

“You should go inside,” Snape said, and Hermione heard the crunch of shoe soles on the cobblestones as he stood. “This bluebell jar clearly isn’t enough.”

“I’m fine, honestly – I’ll get some mittens with fingers, they just get in the way, is all…”

“For now, delight the house-elves and bother them for some hot chocolate.”

They were passing behind Hermione now, and she couldn’t risk peeking around. Harriet, her quilt slung over one shoulder, had her fingers laced through Snape’s. He looked like he didn’t notice.

They passed beneath the ivy-hung arch and out of sight. A moment later, the door opened and shut. Hermione stood, her heart feeling oddly, almost painfully full – but of what, she didn’t know.

Sighing soundlessly, she turned to go, then realized her feet were frozen through. She’d been standing with her shoes in her hand the whole time. Snape’s sudden arrival had made her forget all about them.

She stuffed her icicle feet into her shoes and ducked beneath the arch, and almost had her second heart attack.

Snape was still there.

He didn’t notice her, which must mean God, or whoever kept foolish Gryffindors safe when they blundered into the meanest teacher in the world, was indeed watching out for her. Snape must have been completely in his own head, for he stood staring at the door Harriet had gone through and did not glance around once.

Though she stood behind him, Hermione could tell that his arms were folded across his chest. His posture was not forbidding but hunched, his shoulders tucked in and his head bowed.

If that earlier moment had been precious to Harriet, this, Hermione knew with icy unease, was indescribably private to Snape.

She stood frozen, hardly daring to breathe, determined not to tempt fate a third time. If before he would have been furious, this time detention for a hundred years would be the least of her worries.

Then he raised his head – her heart tried to lodge in her throat, _what if he turned_ – and reached out to open the door. A moment later, in a swish of his long black robes, he was gone.

Her hand had crept up to her chest, as if trying to massage her heart. It was only when the door stayed closed for thirty seconds… a minute… two that she started really breathing again.

But even with both Snape and Harriet gone, she stayed where she was, staring at the door as Snape had done.

She thought she knew, a little bit, what he’d been looking for.


	6. Umbridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thedreamermusing asked: Harriet smiling at Snape like an angel and him going "fuck."

Severus had always had a good sense of his enemies’ abilities, which may have been part of what kept him alive for so long. He knew the good as well as the bad. It was felicitous that Severus was so eager to focus on what he hated; it let him exploit, target, and prepare, often before his quarry was even aware.

So he knew that Umbridge was good at sniffing out wrongdoing, almost as good as he was, and that breakfast was her favorite meal of the day. She became so absorbed in it that she forgot to maliciously spy on everyone in the Hall. That was the reason she was only almost as good as Severus; he was always spying on everyone.

But Umbridge’s love of breakfast and general dispensation of spying did not extend to the Gryffindor table – to a particular set of students, and one in particular.

Had she taken a malicious interest to any other student, any other person, Severus would only have opposed her on the grounds of despising her so much that he would do everything in his power to get in her way. But her loathing and fixation on Harriet was the worst mistake she could have made.

He took the opportunity, while she bent a malevolent eye on Gryffindor table, to doctor her morning tea. This was quite easily done: unlike himself, Umbridge was not actually paranoid. He touched up her teacup by pouring a little more tea and stirring in cream, and she turned with a simpering smile that was a horror to behold.

“Thank you, Severus,” she said. He gave a thin little smile, wishing she would choke on it – but only a little, as he wouldn’t have her go out so easily, not for the world.

Sipping her tea, which would see her breaking out in hives by dinnertime, she swiveled her pouchy eyes toward Gryffindor table again. He felt her dark wave of loathing mixed with a rapacious need to destroy, and knew what he’d see when he looked.

Harriet was staring up at them from her seat, eyes narrowed. When she saw them looking at her, she put on a falsely angelic smile. Umbridge’s hatred ratcheted up; she set her teacup down with a precise ‘clink’ that reminded Severus of a fingernail tapping a guillotine.

Harriet couldn’t have heard it, but she must have caught some change in Umbridge’s expression, for her smile only became sweeter. She turned to answer Miss Granger with a cherubic air and didn’t look up again, not even as Umbridge sliced into her morning kippers or pierced her sausage links with a sinister fork. Every laugh, each inclination of Harriet’s head toward Miss Granger or Weasley, had Umbridge snapping off her bacon like breaking brittle bone. 

As the hour struck for morning classes, Harriet rose with the rest of the unruly horde and followed the surging sea of fatheads through the doors. In passing the high table, she caught Severus’ eye with a gleam of unholy amusement. The innocent air was still laid over it, but it was impossible to miss the gleaming promise of mayhem and rule-breaking.

A cloudy feeling tried to suffuse his heart, though it was so withered and blackened that it was like trying to warm a fossilized prune.

I’ll rip her heart out before she touches you, he thought as the tide of students carried her off. The cloudy feeling darkened into something more familiar, something Dumbledore would have called unhealthy and someone else, someone who hated Severus properly, might have named evil.

But it was familiar, and it was honest. He knew Umbridge – her evil was a blacker mirror of his, running to the root. She would hurt Harriet if she could. He would move right now, if he could. Their twin purposes were only waylaid by a sense that had kept them afloat for this long, the sense that moving too quickly would see them exposed and thwarted, perhaps for good.

All he had to do was strike first. 

And he would.


	7. Sweets for the Sweet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thedreamermusing asked: You said you headcanoned Snape as loving sweet things. I would love to read a drabble where Harriet sees Snape adding like a bucket of sugar in his tea, or his eyes shining when he sees chocolate and squeeing on the inside because it's so goddamn cute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some parts taken from HBP, chapter “silver and opals.”

It was around eight o’clock on a Tuesday night when Harriet first suspected The Truth.

The thing was, she would’ve thought she’d just imagined it – the stress of too much homework, she liked to tell Snape innocently, for the spectacular sarcasm that his face could mold itself into – except that it made certain … anomalies more explicable.

Data, data, data, she thought. Can’t make bricks without clay.

Since she had the Prince’s book with her all the time, she started making notes on what she observed and tucking them between the pages. At breakfast, lunch, dinner, she kept her eyes peeled. She even went down to the kitchens and asked around the house-elves. That was maybe cheating a bit, but it wasn’t like Snape disapproved cheating.

He might not be so thrilled, though, if he found out that her subject of study was his sugar intake.

* * *

On that fateful Tuesday, it started like this:

Snape always laid biscuits out for her visits. She knew they weren’t from the Hogwarts’ cupboards: sometimes they were Belgian, or French, or Italian, and they were fucking divine. She reckoned he must have got them from his jaunts with Narcissa Malfoy, or perhaps she shipped them in to him. One time he’d had little transparent cakes with icing-flowers inside. Harriet had developed a Pavlovian response of almost drooling when she walked into his parlor.

That Tuesday, he’d brought out some kind of sugared violets. Harriet was snapping them up, idly leafing through the Prince’s book while Snape savaged some essays, when she accidentally knocked her quill to the floor. Dusting sugar off her fingertips, she bent down to get the quill.

When she sat up, Snape was sucking on the tip of his finger.

He dropped his hand and went about his marking as if nothing was out of place; quite casually, really. Harriet was prepared to shrug it off – maybe he’d stabbed himself in his fury at Gryffindor punctuation – but then she noticed it:

A finger-shaped mark in the leftover sugar on her plate.

The fingerprint was too big to be hers.

Snape had just swiped a taste of the sugar and sucked it off his finger.

Slowly, she dragged her own finger through the violet flakes and licked them off. Snape just carried on eviscerating the ego of whatever poor student whose composition was under his quill.

Well, he was a spy. It would take more than that to smoke him out.

He always had sugar waiting out with the tea… and she never ate all of the biscuits, but there was always a new box each time, never leftovers on the second trip…

 _He’s got a sweet tooth_ , she thought. An eat-half-a-box-of-biscuits in a day sweet tooth.

She bloody had to know more.

* * *

Fortunately, that weekend was a Hogsmeade weekend. It was going to be thick with snow, but for the possibility of actually seeing Snape eating biscuits, Harriet would endure any weather.

“You haven’t been this eager to get to Hogsmeade in ages,” Hermione said suspiciously as they bundled up, Harriet humming to herself.

“Oh, well, you know,” said Harriet, trying not to grin too broadly, “fresh air and all that.”

Hermione directed a speaking look out the window, where sleet lashed at the pane, but only picked up her hat.

Harriet remained cheerful even on the walk, where the wind blew stinging snow into her face and her feet froze in her boots. She, Hermione and Ron piled into the Three Broomsticks, which smelled like mud and wet cat, to defrost by guzzling hot butterbeer.

“I’ll order,” said Harriet, “I wanted to ask Madam Rosmerta a question.”

Ron’s face fell a bit; Hermione’s grew stony. Harriet winced as she pushed through the standing crowd to the bar. She wondered what she would do if Snape showed the slightest inclination to admire anyone. Probably be horribly jealous – his friendship with Narcissa Malfoy was irritating enough, a fact which made her wonder if she was really an awful person. Surely it was wrong to be jealous that he had a friend. If it were Remus or somebody, she was sure she wouldn’t mind… but Narcissa Malfoy…

 _Maybe I’m just a jealous cow_ , she thought moodily, leaning against the bar.

“Three butterbeers, please,” she said to Madam Rosmerta. “Are there any sweet shops around besides Honeyduke’s? Like gourmet ones or something really posh.”

Madam Rosmerta looked blank for a moment. “There’s always Adele’s,” she said, after a funny pause. “Quite pricey, though.”

“Thanks,” said Harriet. Madam Rosmerta stared at her, then nodded and turned to get the butterbeers. Harriet watched her, half curious, half worried; maybe she was just having an off day.

Ron and Hermione had made up by the time she squeezed back through the crowd to their table. They were sitting close enough that when they saw Harriet, they immediately nudged their chairs apart a bit.

“Ever heard of Adele’s?” Harriet asked as she slid the butterbeers across to them, pretending that she hadn’t seen a thing.

“It’s a tea shop, isn’t it?” Hermione said. Harriet wouldn’t have been too surprised if the only thing Hermione hadn’t known about was Snape’s sweet tooth – and she’d be doubting Hermione’s ignorance extended even that far if _she_ hadn’t spent a great deal more time with him and only just cottoned on. Of course, she had no idea how Hermione learned half the things she did, so maybe she had already figured it out. Harriet wasn’t going to ask.

“Want to get something sweet to take back,” she said.

Hermione’s suspicions were clearly reawakened. “Why not Honeyduke’s?”

“Isn’t it good to try new things?” Harriet asked innocently.

Hermione snorted, but drank down her butterbeer and didn’t pursue it.

Harriet offered to let Ron and Hermione wait for her in the warmth, but Hermione was clearly still in investigative mode and Ron was doubly tempted by the promise of sweets and sticking with Hermione. So after cramming themselves back into scarves and cloaks, they waded up the high street to Adele’s.

After defrosting her glasses, Harriet immediately saw that this was where Snape had to get those treats of his. Little printed boxes full of sweets lined the walls; in front of her was a massive case displaying the stuff that needed to be kept cold: chocolate cakes, cheesecakes, bonbons, macarons, truffles, and more things than Harriet could name. An expertly coiffed witch behind the counter was staring at them dripping snow onto her fine carpet with no great enthusiasm.

It was a bit disappointing that the place wasn’t pink. Snape in here, shopping for sweets surrounded by Umbridge-pink, would have been a picture to sustain her on the most dismal night. But the paint was only a tasteful cream, the wallpaper some kind of bland silk striping.

If the sweets Snape shared with Harriet were an indication of what he liked, he preferred things that weren’t chocolate. She therefore steered herself toward the packaged sweets on the shelves. They were even tied with silky ribbons, which Snape always took off before he brought out the box, and she could see why; it had the shop name printed on it. She recognized the apricot-filling biscuits as a kind he’d laid out two weeks ago.

She also caught sight of the price tag, and reeled a bit.

“Anything here must cost a fortune,” Hermione hissed at her.

“Yeah,” Harriet said dazedly.

“I’m afraid to touch anything,” Ron muttered.

Harriet could have browsed in there for ages, weighing all the mouth-watering sweets for their likelihood of appealing to Snape (did taste hardly matter, or did he have a real favorite? Would he try whatever you put in front of him? Was his shopping at this place a bid to impress her, or did he prefer this kind of ultra posh dessert? Would he eat Galaxy bars if she brought them?) But, in addition to the shop-witch radiating a desire for them to get out, Hermione and Ron clumping up against her wherever she moved flattened her enthusiasm. In the end, in a spirit of mischief, she ordered two small cakes that looked like a mound of flowers from the cold case. Though the shop-witch was clearly hoping she’d seen the last of them, she put a stasis charm on them so that it would keep in transport, boxed them up and tied them off with a mint-green ribbon.

“There you go,” Harriet said, handing one box off to Ron. The mischief was still strong, and she added, “Share it with Hermione, if you like.”

“ _Harriet_ ,” Hermione said, clearly scandalized, though whether it was from the price tag or from embarrassment, Harriet couldn’t tell. Grinning, she tugged her hat down and made her escape while Ron was still sputtering.

She waited for them out on the street while they bundled up; an unpleasant experience, for the wind was higher and the snow thicker. It would be better to say they staggered back toward Hogwarts than “walked,” at times almost bent double against the driving sleet.

The rising storm kept Harriet from hearing the commotion up ahead until she was almost right in the middle of it.

“It’s nothing to do with you, Leanne!”

The voice was familiar – Katie Bell. She and her friend were struggling with a package, fighting over it – either Katie dropped it or Leanne ripped it out of her hands, for it fell to the snow, and the next moment –

Katie rose into the air, like she was being gripped by the front of her robes and gently pulled upward. Sleet lashed at Harriet’s glasses, but she felt a deeper chill, a prickling all over her arms and legs beneath her winter clothes, as Katie’s hair writhed in the icy wind, her eyes shut, her face blank –

And then her eyes shot open and she screamed. The shock of the sound shot to Harriet’s core; before she’d even thought about it, even collected herself, she was standing beneath Katie, reaching up to grab at her ankles where she hung in the air. Leanne had seized Katie’s other leg and was screaming too, though a very different sound, one frightened and panicked, while Katie sounded like she was dying –

Ron was there, too, tall enough to grip Katie’s arm where she hung over their heads, and Hermione was trying to shout over the wind; but a second later, they were all knocked into the snow when the magic holding Katie aloft severed and she crashed down on top of them.

Katie lay in Leanne’s arms, thrashing, screaming, as her friend sobbed her name. Hermione’s eyes were almost black in her pale face, her scarf having been pulled loose, and Ron was trying to held Leanne hold Katie steady. Harriet looked frantically around, but they were the only ones out there on the snow-piled lane.

“Stay there!” she shouted over the wind, clambering up from the slushy road, “I’m going for help–”

* * *

Harriet looked at the crushed cake box and sighed.

Ron made a noise of agreement and offered her a smear of blue icing, which once had been a very intricate flower. Harriet took the fork and dispiritedly sucked the icing off it.

“Poor Katie,” Hermione said quietly. She stared absently at the icing blob-on-a-fork that Ron had put in her hand, but didn’t eat it.

“Think she’ll be all right?” Harriet asked, subdued. It was going to be a while before she forgot the tenor of that scream or Leanne’s weeping. The warmth of the common room fire seemed far away.

“They’ll have to send her to St. Mungo’s, I reckon,” Ron said, voice low. “A curse like that’s no small thing.”

Harriet desperately wanted it to be lights out so she could go see Snape. Professor McGonagall had sent the necklace to him; if he knew the curse, he’d know what would be done about Katie. But, though the common room windows were black, it would be some hours before bedtime, when she could reasonably disappear without raising suspicion.

She hadn’t seen him all afternoon. She’d half hoped for some glimpse of him, for him to come and ask her about the necklace, perhaps. But that was both stupid and selfish – he was helping Katie, and anything he needed to know, Professor McGonagall would tell him. She wasn’t the kind of person who’d report something inaccurately.

“Are you throwing that out?” Hermione asked.

Harriet looked up; Hermione was nodding at the battered cake box. Harriet had chucked it away when she’d rushed to help Katie; she’d have forgotten it on the lane if she hadn’t stepped on it at the last moment, as they’d gathered up the necklace and the sobbing Leanne to follow Hagrid and Katie off to Hogwarts. It was now flattened, stained, and thoroughly ruined. Harriet only hadn’t binned it yet because she felt curiously sentimental about it.

“Yeah,” she sighed, and swept it into the rubbish bin.

Ron gave her the last bite of his cake.

* * *

Even under those subdued circumstances, Harriet couldn’t repress the flutter of a thrill when she cast the spell to unlock Snape’s door. It wasn’t from getting up to anything illicit – not any real sense of illicit, though she definitely wasn’t supposed to be down there at all – but from the fact of Snape’s trusting her enough to give her the power.

Door shut and locked again, she tiptoed to the door of his parlor and peered in. No one was there, aside from himself. He stood over the fire, his back to her, a solid pillar of black against the shadows of the room and the bronze light of the fire. Pulling off her Cloak, she hung it on a peg, and just the soft sound of that made Snape raise his head.

He pivoted and strode toward her. Harriet’s legs momentarily tried to back her into the wall, but she ordered them to stay put. Even if Snape’s face was carved out of marble, his eyes so black they swallowed light, and he looked like Death on the warpath –

He seized her arm – firm but not crushing – and pulled –

And a second later, she collided with his chest; his other arm folded around her, his hand gripping her shoulder, his forearm pressed across her back –

He was hugging her.

Snape was hugging her. His cheek was resting on top of her hair; his chest rose and fell in tightly controlled intervals. She could feel his heartbeat under her cheek.

Harriet was stunned, completely motionless. A sense of unreality, mixed with giddy elation and bewilderment, wouldn’t have kept her still for long, though, had she not suspected that any movement from her would send him running back to the fireplace. If she tried to return the hug – it was all too easy to imagine him snatching himself away and hiding on the other side of the tea table, the way he always did when he let her down here.

She wanted to memorize the moment, the exact placement of his hand and the thin warmth that seeped through his wool robes; but by the time she’d made up her mind to do so, he was pulling back. Disappointment swelled – but he wasn’t going far at all, just enough to look down at her, brushing her hair out of her face, and she quite definitely could not move then, from the shock, which was just as well, because she’d have certainly scared him off if she’d given in to that joyous thrill of having him right there, close and tactile, the way he hardly ever was –

“You aren’t hurt.” His voice was low and dangerous, as if he was ready to throttle any possible pain she might be feeling.

“I didn’t touch it at all.” She wanted to take his hand, wished he’d allow her. It was right there, smoothing over her shoulder, as if straightening her jumper, so bloody tempting to –

But then he was moving back, his hands returning to knot in his robes, his gaze darting away like a shying hippogryff, ferocious yet nervous.

“You did touch Miss Bell,” he said, darting a glare back at her. “Some curses transfer through touch – ”

“I wasn’t going to leave her like that,” Harriet said, exasperated. “You _know_ me.”

“I do, which is why I know this caution to be pointless.” His glare was head-on now; she folded her arms, uncowed. “But _you_ know _me_ , and you know I’m going to bloody say it anyway, I’ll thank you.”

“Yeah, right, fine.” Harriet sighed and dropped her arms. Snape didn’t look at all appeased, so she changed the subject. “How’s Katie?”

“She’s been transported to St. Mungo’s.” He turned away, his own arms still tightly folded, his profile cutting up the firelight like a hatchet. “I could slow the curse but not stop it. If she’d touched the necklace with any more of her skin than she did, she would be dead.”

Harriet felt a chill like when she’d fallen down in the road, Katie a dead weight on top of her. “What was it?”

“A very Dark curse,” Snape said, and wouldn’t elaborate. “You don’t want to know the particulars.”

“Seems worse that way, honestly,” Harriet muttered, recalling the look on Katie’s face as she’d lain in Leanne’s arms. At the same time, she knew she couldn’t imagine all the things dark curses could do. Snape could, though.

“Had you touched it,” he said, staring down into the fire, “you’d be just as she is now.”

Harriet glanced at him – at his forbidding profile, the lank crow-colored hair that hung over his sharp cheek, and remembered the flutter of his heart against her ear. There was something about Snape that always felt … fragile, yet somehow unbreakable. In a way, though, that was scant comfort: it meant he could be hurt over and over again.

(Though she’d never tell him that in a million years. If he knew she’d ever thought he was anything but hard and vicious to the core, he’d throw a fit.)

She needed to distract him.

“I was bringing you a cake,” she said. “I saw the other night that you like sweets.”

He raised his head and stared over at her, his face for once quite blank.

“What?” he said at last.

“You were sampling my sugared violets. I caught you. They came from that Adele’s, didn’t they? Yeah,” she went on, when he only continued to stare, “the shop-witch looked at us like we were a bunch of raccoons someone’d let loose in her shop, but I got this cake with all these iced flowers. Only it got… squashed.” Oops, that brought the conversation back to Katie and the curse. Damn.

Snape was silent for a few moments more. “Are you using this opportunity to root out a secret of mine, while I’m emotionally compromised?”

“Er.” She thought about it. “I dunno?”

“If you were, I’d be proud.”

She grinned, though she felt like sleeping for days. “So you’re going to stop hiding it from me, then?”

“I’ve made no such concession.” His face was immobile, grave, carved with its usual sharp lines. But she caught a hint of something, like a light shining in a deep stairwell far below, or the soft, buried beat of his heart when he’d held her for a moment against him.

 _Guess I’ll have to make you_ , she thought. It was perhaps more Slytherin than Gryffindor not to make the declaration out loud. Snape probably read it in her face, anyway.

But he called for tea and gestured her to the other arm chair without another word.


	8. The Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> oblomovistique asked: Snape and Harriet going the equivalent of a first date - neither of them acknowledging that it is a date - but each thinking secretly it is the best day ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one was written over a year ago and is one of my earliest prompt fills; it fits less with any current TNER/NJE chronology than any of the others. consider this one quite AU by now.

She was angry, and she was empty. Could you be both at the same time? The anger should mean she _wasn’t_ empty, shouldn’t it?

The anger burned in her chest. It radiated from her heart into her throat, overpowering her mind until she couldn’t think of anything but how fucking _angry_ she was – over a thousand things, but _especially_ what Snape had told her –

And then she’d turn a corner in her mind and suddenly it was all gone, all that filling anger, and she was empty. Just… gone.

She didn’t know which state was better. She could think through the emptiness when she couldn’t think through the anger… but in the emptiness, nothing… mattered.

“You need to eat,” Snape said.

Harriet looked up from dumping her pajamas into her bag. The anger came tunneling through her at the sight of his wary face, the tight line between his eyebrows. What he’d told her – what he’d _done_ – she’d never forgive him, never –

And then she was empty again. She threw her hairbrush into her bag and didn’t speak to him. She hadn’t spoken to him since they’d left Surrey, on the train headed south. If her silent treatment was winding him up, he was doing a good job of suppressing it.

Maybe all those Death Eater meetings had given him practice.

She shivered, even though the room was warm, the curtains billowed by a soft breeze. The scent of Snape’s last cigarette hit her, for he always sat by the window to smoke, glaring at the street below, leaning back behind the soft white curtains of the little hotel room. The blue ceramic ashtray on the little table was full. He’d been smoking like a chimney since they’d got on the train yesterday.

“Come on then. If you’re ready,” he said, that line between his eyebrows tightening.

The cafe he chivvied her to was narrow, battered by age and wear but clean, with rows of fluffy pastries inside a glass case. The tang of coffee in the air didn’t quite disguise the smoke smell on Snape’s black once-part-of-a-suit jacket.

“What do you want?” he asked. He glared at the pastries; the woman behind the counter looked bored and unimpressed.

Harriet wasn’t hungry – or she _was_ , but it was a need, not a desire to eat – so she shrugged. She wasn’t going to make Snape’s job easier.

He cracked one of his knuckles and ordered her breakfast in French, which Harriet certainly didn’t speak. The pastry was handed over in a plain white bag, the coffee in two disposable cups. As they stepped back outside, onto the street, Harriet wondered what it would be like to sit at the round tables on the sidewalk and eat and watch things go by, but Snape was in such a hurry…

“I want to sit here and eat,” she said.

Snape stopped – not slowed down or paused; he stopped, like a car screeching on its tires. When he turned to look at her, his expression was scorching.

Harriet sat down at one of the empty tables and opened her bag. Snape had got her some kind of croissant that felt like a bready cloud, flecked with almonds.

He sat down across from her. Their positions were reversed: Snape now silent, now filled with roaring anger. She felt it curdling the air.

Harriet ate her pastry and sipped her coffee. It was bitter and burned her tongue. She’d never had coffee before. She both liked and hated it, which was as odd as being both angry and empty.

Snape lit a cigarette and smoked aggressively, angling his body so he could expel smoke away from her. He drank his coffee like he wanted to punch it in the face.

Harriet pulled her croissant apart, savoring each almondy bite. She took her time, not because it was delicious – even though it was – or because the day was beautiful, warm light and soft skies and Paris all around her – even though that was true, too. She did it because it agitated Snape. Even when the anger was somewhere out of reach, she knew it was there and why.

And Snape, she was sure, knew it was there and why… and he thought it was _right_ for it to be there, or he wouldn’t be acting so… patient with her.

It _was_ acting. Snape wasn’t patient. He’d smoked his way through two cigarettes already, and she was only halfway through her croissant.

“You do realize we are on a timetable,” he said, more than halfway through his third cigarette. Perhaps Harriet’s lazy chewing was wearing on his last nerve.

“Are Death Eaters or Professor Dumbledore going to hunt us down on a schedule?” she asked.

Snape didn’t break the table in half, which was honestly quite disappointing. “Allow me to be a better judge of their likely _schedule_ than you are. Getting as far as we can as fast as we can is – in our bests interests.”

“I’ve never been to Paris before,” Harriet said. Flower-boxes in the windows above them were bursting with blooms.

“You can savor the sights _and_ walk, I should think.”

Harriet shrugged again, and he ground his cigarette into the ashtray so hard that it skidded.

“If you want to return to your aunt’s house,” he said, his lips barely moving, “then tell me. I cannot interpret what is – tell me _what you want_.”

Harriet put a piece of bread between her teeth and sank her teeth slowly into it. His face was so… tired. Some people looked like the hadn’t slept in days, but on Snape it looked like years.

Through the emptiness, enmeshed by her anger, she felt something… else. She didn’t know what it was.

She swallowed the bread. “I almost died yesterday.”

His eyes tightened and he looked away. He knew. He was the only one who’d come for her after it had happened. He’d come, and now they were here.

“I want to see Paris,” she said. “Just for – today.”

Snape rubbed a hand over his mouth and dragged his fingers through a piece of hair that had fallen across his cheek.

“All right,” he said hoarsely.

Harriet picked up her coffee cup and stuffed the rest of her pastry between her teeth. “Ready,” she said around the croissant.

They walked until the bright blue of the sky dimmed into dark blues and roses and daffodils and street-lamps replaced the sun. Snape let her direct where to go, and Harriet went where she wanted – toward whatever replaced the emptiness with a spark of curiosity. A Japanese garden, a street of stalls with boxes of old records, a long park lined with benches marching up to the Eiffel Tower and fountains throwing rainbow prisms into the air. He even let her corral him onto a boat that went down the river.

They stuck to the Muggle quarters, which Snape knew. “Narcissa is fond of Paris,” he said, reminding Harriet of things in his life she’d rather not think about.

She leaned over the wide bridge railing, watching the street-lamps exhale on the glittering black water, and thought about how so not-very-long-ago she’d have died of mortification and delight at being able to be here, with Snape; at not fighting him not to be pushed away, thrown out of his office, ignored. He’d been so _angry_ all the time… and now it was like he knew the same emptiness she did, tempered only by the mindless _hurt_ that came in searing tides.

On the bridge, cast in the lamplight, Snape looked like someone else. The Muggle clothes (black trousers and jacket and plain white shirt, no surprises), the anger lines in his face lapsed into exhaustion… even his eyes, which she was used to burning cold or enraged, seemed lit by some inner light that was dim and far away.

“Well?” he asked, perhaps because she was staring at him. “Where to now?”

Her feet ached from walking since the morning. She could have slept for a year. She didn’t want to remember, to think, to be angry or empty. She wanted to be the Harriet from not-so-very-long-ago, anxious yet almost happy, because Snape was there with her.

“Wherever you think,” she said.

They walked off the bridge, side by side, looking in different directions, as if they weren’t really together at all.

But Harriet took the memory of Snape sitting on one of those benches at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, squinting in the sun that came dazzling through the fountain spray, and folded it up, tucking it away somewhere… for later.


	9. The Drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Snarriet, non-magical or magical. One teaches the other how to drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't like the my original response to this prompt, so I pretty much rewrote the entire thing.

Harriet drove as heart-stoppingly as she flew. Watching from Quidditch stands, this talent kept Severus on the edge of his seat as he wondered how she’d survive this latest near-death experience. In a car, it resulted in feeling like _he_ was on the verge of a constant near-death experience.

“This is fun!” she called over the whipping of the wind, because of course she was the type to drive with all the windows down, hair in constant (more-than-usual) disorder.

“ _Fun_ ,” he forced past his teeth. He refused to hold onto the dashboard, but he was gripping his seatbelt very vigorously.

Harriet dragged the steering wheel in a loop, careened around a corner, and pulled over without signaling, at least managing not to crash into the hedge on the side of the narrow country lane she’d been blasting down. Even after the engine powered down, Severus’ heart was still tangled up with his teeth, as if it couldn’t quite believe they hadn’t wrapped themselves around a tree.

“Are we alive?” he asked, as soon as he organized his vocal cords. “All in one piece? I can hardly believe it.”

“Har har,” she said, unconcerned, unbuckling her seatbelt. “C’mon. We’re going for a walk.”

He didn’t scramble out of the car; he let himself out with dignity. He never should have taught her how to drive. Harriet had an unobtrusive way of asking for favors that was entirely disarming, and he always fell for it. Worse still, he expected he was weak because she _didn’t_ _ever_ ask for favors. She said things and he figured out a way to oblige. He doubted it was any evidence of latent good nature developing in himself; it was surely more to do with a lifetime of toadying to cagey megalomaniacs.

Whatever habits he’d developed over the years, the truth was that one day Harriet had simply wondered aloud what it was like to drive, and he’d said, “I might as well teach you, if you’re curious” (as if he couldn’t have guessed what she might be like behind a wheel).

Harriet locked the car, though there was no one around, and struck away from the road, into the trees, climbing the hill. She moved with a destination clearly in mind, though in no particular hurry. Not sorry to be out of the car and not on a gurney, curious though he wouldn’t show it, Severus followed.

“I’m surprised you know how to drive,” she said, after they’d been walking in comfortable silence for a little over ten minutes, through the upward sloping wood. She said it easily, not with the weight of curiosity behind it, not as if she were prying; but he suspected it was a bid for information. It might be his paranoia, or it might be Harriet adapting herself to his secretive bastard ways. He was still acclimating himself to receiving inquiries that were sought from pure interest in himself, not from any other motive.

And yet, he _was_ a secretive bastard. The truth -- that in that summer after fifth year, when he’d humiliated and ruined himself, he’d vented his self-loathing on his neighbors’ cars, breaking into them and, when that wasn’t enough, latterly stealing them -- he was reluctant to give, not only from its reminding him of a time he wanted to bleach from his memory, but because it was _his_ truth.

“I don’t have a license,” he said by way of reply, reaching up to push a low-hanging branch out of his way.

Harriet grinned, but her eyes were curious. She didn’t pursue it, though. “We’d better not get pulled over by any cops, then.”

“In that case, perhaps you might drive like less of a madwoman.”

“You think I have it in me?” she asked cheerfully.

The wood cleared away only a few minutes later, leaving them at the top of a rise that swept down into a valley ribboned with a sauntering river. Beneath a sky bruised by stormy clouds, the ancient ruin of a castle kept a silent, solitary vigil.

“There.” She beamed. “Nice, don’t you think?”

He looked across the scene, which Harriet must have researched and picked out especially to drive to. He could have said, ‘We could have Apparated here, and I wouldn’t have run the risk of a heart attack.’ But he knew that Muggle upbringing left its mark; that somewhere, perhaps without even knowing it, Harriet had some dream of outings in cars, of driving to some far-off place with someone (important, even dear) who would appreciate the end destination. And she’d picked a craggy, ruined castle on a rainy-looking day, because she knew that that sort of Romantic nonsense was just to his taste. Had he been in charge, he would have made the trip as wizardly as possible; but without studying for a compromise, she had knitted one together with the sort of unthinking, quiet flair she was capable of at her most unguarded moments. James and Lily had been obviously brilliant, no subtlety to their success; Harriet, unobtrusive by habit, could not entirely repress the ability to outshine everyone else on things that were important to her.

He had once aspired to be great, powerful, impressive, thinking with the blind selfish delusion of youth that it was in the interest of the person he had deemed so important to him. In the misery that had followed, he had lived for penance and regret. And now, after surviving all the dangers of his chosen expiation, he had a new view to direct his life: how to be a _better_ person. Even his twisted, withered version of goodness was harder to seek for than greatness. There was no one event that showed the world and marked you out. It was ongoing, frequently exhausting, requiring as complete a self-command as he’d ever taught himself to exert at moments that once had meant his very life.

“It’s worth the drive,” he said at last.

Harriet smiled and pressed her cheek against his shoulder, a reward more complete than any he had received at the height of his pursuits for glory. He imagined, at first, that she couldn’t know how much it affected him. . . but then he remembered how dearly every moment of tranquility had been bought; how very nearly he never would have had the opportunity to hate the way she drove.

She knew.


	10. Starshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Asteria pov of Harriet saving her that first time she got bullied.

“Daphne?” Asteria had whispered months ago, at the start-of-term feast. “Which—which one’s Harriet Potter?”

“The Gryffindor table sits against the opposite wall,” Daphne murmured, cutting neatly into her potatoes. “Harriet Potter is usually sitting with a crop of redheads. She has the most terrible hair . . . all wild and every which-way. . . and the most appalling glasses. . . oh, her back’s to our table. She’s sitting next to the girl with the horridly bushy hair. . .”

Asteria saw her, then. From the back, she could not make out much more than wild black hair. Harriet Potter was quite tiny. She was sitting in a knot of students who were all laughing and talking and throwing food at each other, but did not seem bothered by any of it. Asteria both envied her and shuddered with relief to be at the much more decorous Slytherin table, where no food was thrown and individual groups kept to themselves. It was quite frightening enough, honestly. So many new faces—so many unfamiliar sights—the chaos of King’s Cross; the roar and thunder of the train; the crashing sea of all those voices, the whirl of strange faces; the darkness of the Hogsmeade station; the crowds pouring toward the carriages; the terrible, drowning cold of the Dementors, burying her in icy surf, battering, churning; more crowds on the front steps, and Daphne hustling her through them, whispering, “I’ll explain to Professor McGonagall why you didn’t take the boats, why I brought you with me, you needn’t speak to her, Aster, don’t worry”; the long walk down the aisle, beneath the brightness of the candles, past the blurred faces all watching; the walk alone to the Hat, like a march to the gallows, and placing it on; hearing ___No, no, Slytherin won’t do for you at all, almost as bad as Gryffindor; you’ll want Hufflepuff, where they’re compassionate and accepting, like yourself; or possibly Ravenclaw, you’re certainly clever enough, although you’ll find them rather aloof . . . No? Well, you’ll regret it in your own time. . .___

But she had to be with Daphne, she thought as she removed the Hat and made her way on trembling legs to the Slytherin table, where Daphne stood to embrace her while the table clapped. She wouldn’t survive such a new, frightening, strange, unfamiliar place without Daphne. Asteria knew that everyone thought she was dreadfully silly. She cried whenever people had to go away, even if it was only for the day. She could barely breathe when thinking of going away herself. The sight of strangers, even at a distance, tied her heart in knots; and if they should come closer she could barely hold still at the thought of them talking to her; and if they ___did___ speak to her, sometimes she couldn’t talk past the thickness in her throat.

“As soon as the Sorting is over,” Daphne whispered to her as Professor Flitwick (for Professor McGonagall was in conference with a student) called ___Morton, Morbius!___ to the Hat, “we shall have the feast. You’ll adore the feast, Aster. It has such treats and dishes as you’ve never seen.”

It ___was___ a tremendous feast, magnificent and wonderful. The food grew on the plates like spring flowers sped towards summer, and the candles overhead glimmered on the bodies of the ghosts that floated through the walls. At home, the food had been much scanter, and the only light had come from the fireplace and the old lamps Mama lit with her wand. Asteria missed home so terribly. What was Callie doing without them all?

Soon her head was aching and heavy. She knew no one in the Hall, knew no one’s names, except those she’d been told by Daphne . . . and Harriet Potter.

Asteria knew Harriet Potter by reputation, as everyone did. She had loved to read the story of Harriet Potter all her life. It made her so terribly sad, but it was all so incredibly, wonderfully brave. Harriet Potter had defeated Voldemort not only once, but twice, and last year had slain a Basilisk that was Petrifying students who might otherwise have died. Now Sirius Black had escaped from prison to kill her. Asteria had not been able to sleep for a week after hearing. But now she was at school with Harriet Potter . . . and even though Harriet Potter would surely never, ever have any reason to speak to ___her___ , lowly Asteria Greengrass, Asteria would be able to see her and to know that there went someone who was so much infinitely braver than herself, who made her wish, with all her heart, that she too could be brave.

That hope lasted until later that night, when she had to leave Daphne and go to her own dorm. She had never slept alone in her life; one and often two of her sisters had always been there. Now Daphne would not even be in the same room. And her roommates were all strangers, and they noticed that her robes were handmade, and they giggled at her old-fashioned nightgown that had once belonged to her grandmother. And she got lost going to the bathroom to brush her teeth, and once she had got there she realized she’d forgotten her toothpaste, and she was much too frightened to ask to borrow anyone’s. The dungeon was cold; she lay in bed shivering, trying to get warm and sleep, while her dorm-mates whispered excitedly, and whenever she turned over in bed, she struggled awake from formless nightmares that left her heart racing.

By the next morning, Asteria hated Hogwarts. It was too big—it was overwhelming—it was terrifying. The size, the number of people—she had never been around so many people in her life. She was lost—in the the strangeness and the amount of things she didn’t know. Her books were filled with so much knowledge, and just on that first day, the teachers told them so ___much___. She was sure she hadn’t understood any of it, but she had also been paralyzed with fright at the thought of being called on—which would have been a terrifying prospect even if she had known the answer, but she knew she wouldn’t. And all those voices, all the faces, all the people, all the noise—it had all been too much, so that when Professor Lupin had looked at her and spoke, she’d completely lost her head.

Then everyone had made fun of her. They stared at her, and they sniggered, and strange people would come up and say to her, “Not going to faint again, are you?”

She hated Hogwarts. She hated it more than she had when it had first took Leto away, and then Daphne, her most beloved sister. But she couldn’t tell anyone, because then they’d send her away. It would make Daphne terribly upset to know how unhappy she was. Daphne knew she was ___unhappy___ but she didn’t know how very much, because Asteria always made sure she went to bed first so that she could cry in the privacy of the four-poster, without Daphne seeing. Mama wouldn’t like it either—she’d be so disappointed that Asteria couldn’t meet her expectations. Asteria couldn’t disappoint everyone so terribly.

She also hated being in Slytherin. The Sorting Hat had been right. It was bad enough being teased for being a fainter, laughed at because she was afraid of everything, and poor; but it was even worse to hear the boos and hisses from Nons, as Slytherin called them, called ___snake___ and ___liar___ by the other first-year girls. There were particular bathrooms the Slytherins used, so they wouldn’t have to put up with the Nons cutting them in line, or barring them from the cubicles, or stealing the toilet paper.

“It’s just the way it is,” Daphne said, with a calmness that Asteria couldn’t understand. “It’s our burden. It is why we must stay strong together, even if sometimes we don’t like each other”—Asteria knew she was thinking of Pansy—“because if we are not strong together, then they can drive us too easily apart. We need allies to survive.”

Asteria had no allies except for Daphne. Leto at school was different. Asteria was frightened of her—not because Leto was cruel to her—in fact, at first Leto had invited Asteria into her circle of friends, happy to show her off, until Asteria had panicked and Leto had to hustle her away.

“ _ _ _Honestly___ , Aster,” she’d said. “Oh, I am sorry, my love, but you really must learn to get over this, or how will you survive?” Daphne took care of her, but Daphne was in third year and had her own classes and friends. Pansy was the worst of them, for she seemed to really ___hate___ Asteria; Tracey was cool and indifferent, quite frightening. Asteria was nearly comfortable with Millicent because she never spoke to her or looked at her and was just as good as Asteria at fading into the furniture, unnoticed. Only at Hogwarts, people did notice Asteria, and she hated it. She simply wanted to learn in absolute peace and quiet, unnoticed by everyone, unspoken to by all, except for Daphne. She didn’t even want Harriet Potter to speak to her; she only wanted to admire her from afar.

It had taken a great deal of work to convince Daphne to go to Hogsmeade and leave her by herself. But Daphne had so been looking forward to it, especially getting to spend the day with Tracey. Daphne had never said so, but Asteria knew. Daphne might not even know her own self, not fully, but Asteria saw and understood, though no one else seemed to. It made her wretched to be left alone, but she would have been unhappier had Daphne stayed behind, disappointed.

She spent the morning writing a falsely cheerful letter to Callie and then climbed to the Owlery to post it. It was the first time she had been there alone, and she trembled to make her own way there. But she had gone with Daphne several times, and there had been nothing to fear. . . This time, there was.

“Little snakes aren’t supposed be up this high,” said the boy.

Asteria was having trouble breathing. They’d taken her bag away, turned it inside out, blown it up, and popped it, laughing when the BANG made her jump. Her throat felt blocked; her heart was beating so hard her head was swimming.

“Too bad, little snake,” said another of them—there were three, and they were in her Double Herbology class with the Gryffindors. Daphne had warned her that the Gryffindors could be cruel to Slytherins, so she’d tried to stay away from them.

“Not a very good weapon, all this paper,” said the third, waving her letter at her, the one she’d been going to send to Callie when she’d met them coming out of the Owlery. “It sort of”—he ripped her letter down the middle—“just comes to pieces.”

They laughed some more. Asteria had nowhere to go. She was backed up against the wall. She couldn’t move, like her body wouldn’t work.

“What the fuck?”

Asteria was facing the doorway, so she saw who it was first, though the boys had to turn. It was Harriet Potter. Her shoulder-length hair was wilder than ever, and she was staring at them, at first astonished and then growing angry. Her green eyes were fierce and furious and if she had looked at Asteria that way, so angry and crackling, Asteria was sure she would have fainted dead away.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Harriet Potter demanded of the boys.

“Oh, come on, Potter,” said one of them. “It’s only a snake.”

“I don’t care.” Harriet Potter stalked toward them with such a ferocious glare that two of them backed away. “You get off her.”

“Or what?” said the bravest boy, though his friends looked like they’d have happily complied. “You’ll really show me when you get bigger?” He held his hand out, measuring how tall she was. She only came up to his chin. “When’s that gonna be?”

“I’ll show you what I did to that Basilisk ___right now___ ,” she growled, pulling out her wand.

But he just grinned. “Ooh,” he said. “I’m really scared.”

“Good,” she said.

Then Harriet Potter punched him in the nose.

What happened next was quite confused in Asteria’s mind. When she came to a sense of herself, she was in the Hospital Wing and Professor McGonagall, looking absolutely terrifying, like a wrathful eagle, was marching the boys away, and kind Madam Pomfrey was telling Asteria that she would be quite all right and things would calm down very soon. But then Professor Snape swept into the ward and put her into a new terror. Although Daphne insisted he was very kind, he was so fierce that Asteria was quite as frightened of him as she was of Professor McGonagall. She could barely concentrate in Potions or Transfigurations for fear of doing something wrong and either of them speaking to her. She much preferred Herbology or Charms or Defense Against the Dark Arts because those professors smiled.

Asteria stared at her feet while Madam Pomfrey drew a curtain round her bed for privacy. She risk a look upward as the matron pulled the curtains closed, and her heart turned over when she saw Harriet Potter looking at her. Her piercing green eyes were curious -- at least, Asteria thought they were, as she drew the image to the front of her mind later, over and over again; at the time, she had pulled her own eyes away after only a flash of a second.

“Miss Potter asked after you,” Madam Pomfrey said to her later, once Professor Snape and Harriet Potter had gone. “She’d like to know you’re feeling better soon, so you had best get quite well before long.”

Asteria could not believe that someone so famous and important as Harriet Potter would care so much about what happened to her. She was nobody at all, even among pure-bloods. She felt weak and shaky still, but there was a small spark inside, like a warmth generated by something other than the sun. The warmth stayed inside her, as steady as starshine.


	11. Feminine Arts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> paperclipq asked: TNER prompt: Snape helping Harriet with girly stuff, hair, dress, make-up...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgot about this one -- I wrote it 7 months ago.

“I’m not so sure about this,” Harriet said.

Severus’ hands didn’t pause in their mixing. “We can always fake a drastic, sudden illness.”

“Don’t I wish,” she said gloomily. “Fine. Let’s get it over with.”

“The only ball you’ve been to,” he said as he reached for a slender brush, “you did not have me for a partner.”

She smiled, pleased with the change in more ways than one. “You going to terrify all the reporters into submission?”

“The reporters are under strict injunction to behave themselves.” He swirled the brush tip into the goop he’d been working on, gathering the shadowy substance – really quite like a shadow, shifting greys and blacks and blues and greens. “They will wait in a separate room until they are permitted entrance into the ballroom. Close your eyes – this will be easier if your lids aren’t moving.”

Harriet obeyed and tried to hold still. The brush tip was cool and wet, and it tickled softly. Severus swept it over her lid, up to her eyebrow, then returned and concentrated in the hollows of her bones. It felt soothing, really.

“They are permitted to film your opening speech, but not to ask questions until the appointed time. I will be enforcing it, though in this, at least, I trust the Aurors to do their job.” He said ‘trust’ the way he might’ve said ‘they’ll regret it if they don’t.’

Eyes still shut, she groaned. “You had to remind me about the speech.”

“If you like, I can remove the memory until you arrive at the ball,” he said coolly.

The brush disappeared from her eye, and then another, with a narrower tip – she could feel the tapered point – returned, tracing along the edge of her lashes. The few times she’d tried to apply liner herself, her eyelid kept wiggling and the line went all over the place. Severus had an iron-steady hand.

“Where’d you learn how to do this?” she asked, barely moving her lips, as if they might mess him up.

“Trade secrets,” he said with an edge of sarcasm that she recognized as playful. He was tracing her other eye now.

Smiling would probably mess up his line. “Spies have to know all kinds of crazy things, I reckon.”

“ _Secrets_ , Harriet. Open your eyes – I’ll do the lower lid, now.”

She risked a glance in the mirror. The eye makeup he’d used – a very expensive kind he knew from Narcissa Malfoy, she’d found out – adapted to her skin tone and made her eyes greener than ever. He’d blended perfectly: her eyes looked like they’d been done by a professional. She tried not to move so as not to mess up the line he was tracing on the outer edge of her eye.

“And after the speeches?” she said. They’d gone over all this before, but it was helping to quell the nervous hippogriff in her stomach, to be reminded.

“After the speeches, they may quietly observe. To approach you, they will need to have applied for permission beforehand, and you may still refuse. They may speak to you individually for only two minutes total. All pictures must receive the permission of yourself or your guard before they are taken or allowed to leave the ballroom.”

She knew who her guard was: Severus, Hermione, Tonks, and Kingsley’s hand-picked Aurors. Hermione and Severus had agreed that some press was necessary at the first official celebration following the end of the war, and had set about arranging it with ruthless efficiency. Harriet wasn’t happy about reporters being anywhere near her, but she reckoned Hermione and Severus knew best when it came to political things. And she knew neither of them would be any happier about reporters hounding her, either.

Well – Hermione wouldn’t. From that slight, cruel smile touching his mouth as he finished up her eyes, Harriet knew that Severus was just waiting for someone to slip up. He’d probably got all the documents arranged so that whatever he did in retaliation was legally defensible.

“The sudden illness still sounds pretty good,” she said. “Or a sudden disappearance, to Mongolia, maybe. I don’t mind reporters speculating about me if they’re on another continent.”

“If you wish,” he said, with a kind of idle promise that was still a promise, as he picked up another jar of makeup whose purpose she didn’t even know. “It can be arranged.”

While he brushed touches of powder across her cheekbones and the top of her forehead, she wistfully imagined just running off, the two of them together, and sending Hermione a postcard by Muggle post. If only.

“Would be nice,” she said, smiling at him in the mirror.

It was weird seeing his hair clean – shiny, even. He’d holed himself up in the bathroom to fix it, and it fell in a straight sheet almost to his shoulders. His robes were more of that black material that sucked in light and cut close to his wrists and shoulders before falling in heavy folds to the floor. They gave him the appearance of being larger than he was, though he was so good at projecting menace that people forgot he was skinny as a rake and not even very tall.

“But I suppose if we’ve faced Dark Lords and all, we shouldn’t whinge about a public ball. Even if it’s got reporters running all over it.”

“Certainly the Dark Lord was worse,” he said smoothly, capping the powder. “Though I wouldn’t put money on your preferring a cabal of Dark wizards to crash the place.”

“Well, I don’t know.” She smiled up at him. His eyelid flickered, and he pretended to be checking his work, reaching up to tweak one of her curls. The lingering touch as he smoothed it back into place said everything he pretended to hide. “Unlike the Yule Ball, this time I’ve got a proper date.”

“And have finally learnt to dance.”

“Thanks to you on that, too,” she said cheerfully.

Standing, she shook out her skirt. She’d gone with dark green, this time. From practice, she knew the dress would spin out magnificently when she twirled. If she had to dance in front of half the wizarding world and its press, she was going to bloody well have fun. They’d won the war, Severus was with her – and it was her birthday.

“All ready?” she said, holding her arms out for inspection.

Severus looked her over with a critical eye (and his focus reminded her, though he most likely hadn’t intended it to, that this was going to be a long night in some ways that were better than others). He tucked a seam down along her shoulder, though she wasn’t sure anything had really been wrong with it.

“I have complete faith in you,” he said, with dismissive sincerity.

“That could mean anything,” she said, grinning as she reached up to take his hand. “Complete faith that I’ll lose it and punch a reporter, that I’ll trip on my hem, that I’ll drop wine all over the white dress of some visiting diplomat–”

“Yes,” he said blandly, accepting her hand. “All of that is quite possible.”

She laughed, because her happiness couldn’t be contained by a smile.


	12. His Voice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Snape is not a physically attractive man but he's got the most sinful voice ever! Can we see Harriet reacting to Snape's voice (one-shot maybe)?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one from last year that I forgot to post! All of Snape’s dialogue is taken from _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince._

Harriet filed into the DADA classroom, glancing around curiously to see what Snape had done to it. One of his favorite pastimes seemed to be using his surrounding space to project his personality; she couldn’t imagine him just letting any room alone, once it belonged to him.

And she was right. Snape had distinctly creeped up the place. Long, dark, heavy drapes blocked out all natural light; torches in the wall scones lengthened the shadows; and he’d even thrown up some revolting and disturbing pictures of people suffering in the grip of deadly curses. As the class shuffled into seats, they cast uneasy glances at the prints on the walls, contorting in the dim light. Nobody dared speak. Snape’s determination to wrong-foot and intimidate them from the minute they walked in was in full force, and it was working.

Really, Harriet thought with fondness as she looked at an inky sketch of a wizard shrieking in agony, which was decidedly unnerving Parvati, it was sort of… cute, the lengths he went to.

“I have not asked you to take out your books,” said Snape.

Several people jumped; Hermione hastily slid her copy of _Confronting the Faceless_ back into her bag. Harriet’s heart gave a funny little flip as Snape closed the door with a soft echo that sounded ominous, even to her, and moved through the creeping shadows he’d created to stand behind his desk.

As he faced them, she tried to keep her face from doing anything stupid. Snape was surveying them with a cold expression, contempt glimmering beneath like a shadow under water, the drape of black hair cutting sharp lines along his cheekbones. The compressed sneer was as familiar as a wave, and she had to look down at her desk to stop from smiling.

“You have had five teachers in this subject so far, I believe,” he said coldly.

Harriet concentrated on the wood grain in front of her. Had his voice always sounded that good? Sort of dark, smoky and silky at the same time; an almost palpable thing, as if it had texture…

“Naturally, these teachers will all have had their own methods and priorities. Given this confusion, I am surprised so many of you scraped an O.W.L. in this subject. I shall be even more surprised if all of you manage to keep up with the N.E.W.T. work, which will be much more advanced.”

He started walking in a circuit of the room around the edge. Unable to look away – perhaps from the hypnotic menace he projected – the class craned their necks or twitched in their seats to keep him in sight. A few students looked nervous as he swept behind them. Harriet decidedly did not feel nervous, though she certainly didn’t feel settled.

“The Dark Arts,” said Snape, his voice dropping even lower, to a register that shouldn’t have been that clearly heard, yet alone so compelling, “are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible.”

Harriet was glad the room was so dim; she was sure she was blushing. Now she knew why Parvati and Lavender were always giggling. A kind of embarrassed elation was pressing on her chest; her ears felt hot. Snape’s controlled prowl, the soft yet severe cadence of his voice – that bloody _loving caress_ as he talked about the sodding Dark Arts – were making her feel extremely silly, and yet very much the opposite. Her eyes tracked the billow of his robes against the shadows, the dismissive sweep of his gaze that didn’t miss a trick. For a second, she thought he met her eye, and something electric shot across her skin.

“Your defenses,” he said, a little louder, making her wonder if he’d planned to sound so darkly admiring or not, “must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the Arts you seek to undo.”

Well, she thought, as she tried to pay attention to what he was saying to Parvati about Inferi, there was one good thing about having him for DADA: even if she got so frazzled by his bloody voice that she lost track of what he was saying, she would probably do well in Defense regardless.


End file.
